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Thursday, July 28, 2011

Raising the Medicare eligibility age is stupid and counterproductive
Posted by Jill | 7:12 PM
It's like making everyone who doesn't live in a a flood plain or hurricane-prone area wait 2 years to get homeowners insurance while taking all comers in Florida right away. The whole thing with insurance is that is spreads the risk. If Barack Obama is ready to bargain away Medicare kick-in at 65, he's capitulating to Teh Stupid for no reason at all.

Rick Ungar explains:
Not surprisingly, younger participants in Medicare spend a lot less of the government’s money than older beneficiaries simply because they don’t get sick as often as the older folks. By cutting out the youngest in the Medicare program – those who are 65 to 67 – the government would be kicking out the very beneficiaries whose monthly payments are most likely to stay in the system where their money helps to pay for the care of older participants. Why? Because these younger payers are less likely to require the government to make payouts on their own behalf.

In the meantime, the burden of insuring those who would be denied Medicare for a few years would fall to employers – assuming those over 65 can still be employed – where things can get pretty expensive when having to insure someone who is now in the very oldest employee demographic.

As for those who are no longer employed, it would get very scary as purchasing insurance at 65 can be an ugly adventure – even with the benefit of Obamacare.

I support the President in his willingness to make the hard decisions to get the country back on a sound financial footing. I’m even willing to consider changes in programs I very much believe in, such as Medicare, if those changes will preserve the program’s finances going forward.

But is it asking too much that if cuts are to be undertaken that the changes actually do something rather than simply appear to do something?

You'd think, wouldn't you? But when what we have is government-by-kabuki, the old rules no longer apply.

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1 Comments:
Blogger Pangolin said...
The private insurance system in the U.S. is based upon a flat fraud. We KNOW that medical care can be delivered for 50% less per capita in Canada while covering everybody for vision, basic dental and medical.

There aren't Canadians sneaking into the U.S. to get free treatment at clinics. There ARE U.S. citizens sneaking into Canada to get medical care.

It would be nice to live in a nation that respected reality.
7/29/11, 2:22 AM  
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